National Business Review

17 April 2009

Application helps keep track of all the complexities.

For many, The Resource Management Act is a beast careering out of control.

Regional sales manager Adrian Bullen told NBR his company’s eponymous online software had its genesis when CS-VUE was approached the Auckland City Council in 2003 to devise a system for tracking and managing consent complaince within the council.  For Auckland software company CS-VUE, it has proved a business opportunity. (Read on …)

A company has been convicted and fined in the Burnie Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to allowing dairy effluent to pollute a waterway at Smithton. (Read on …)

Transpacific Cleanaway Pty Ltd were found guilty, in December 2008, of breaching its EPA operating licence for its Tullamarine Landfill operation and been ordered to pay $75,000 to a community environmental project. (Read on …)

Mobil Refining Australia (Pty) Ltd were convicted in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, during December 2008, on one charge of causing an environmental hazard.

The company pleaded guilty to the charge, and was ordered to pay $350,000 to fund environmental projects. (Read on …)

Caltex Australia Petroleum Pty Ltd was convicted in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court today (March 6) on one charge of permitting an environmental hazard. (Read on …)

ECOLOGICAL fallout from the Queensland oil spill will be felt for months and could include albinism in mangrove plants and reduced fish populations, scientists warn.

But while experts yesterday called for long-term environmental monitoring, they also said early signs suggested damage from the 250-tonne spill was not as great as first feared. (Read on …)

An 82-year-old grandmother is prepared to go to jail rather than foot the bill to clean up toxic chemicals left behind by a rogue tenant.

Ruth Browne’s children, Alf Browne and Bev Olbrick, said the tenant, whose business has gone into liquidation, had abused his EPA licence by storing up to 50 tonnes of dry cleaning chemical and waste on the premises.

His licence allowed for 1.2 tonnes.

Mr Browne said the tenant, who had not paid rent since 2005 and had now abandoned the warehouse, had stored more than 300 drums of toxic waste on the premises in Ebden St, Moorabbin in Melbourne’s south-east.

He said despite informing the EPA of the breach, the environmental regulator had demanded that his mother, who bought the warehouse as part of her superannuation, pay the $1.3 million clean-up bill. (Read on …)

Absorbent booms have been set in the Waihopai River to catch residual oil from a spillage at an Invercargill industrial site.  Over 100 litres of light heating or lubrication oil was accidentally spilled after a tap was left running on Tuesday night. (Read on …)